Brewer's: Encratites

(4 syl.). A sect of the second century, who condemned marriage, forbade eating flesh or drinking wine, and rejected all the luxuries and comforts of life as “things sinful.” The sect was founded by Tatian, a heretic of the third century, who compiled from four other books what he called a Diatessaron—an heretical gospel. (See Eusebius, book iv. chap. xxix.) (Greek, egcrates, self-mastery.)

This heretic must not be confounded with Tatian the philosopher, a disciple of Justin Martyr, who lived in the second century.

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